The Quincunx, in the best traditions of the great Victorian novel, is a page-turner. Charles Palliser should have issued it in instalments and I for sure would have been drooling in anticipationlike Bertie waiting for dinner. Apparently on the east coast of America they were looking out for the ship bringing the next addictive shot of Dickens.
It’s in the best traditions of Dickens – just when you think things cannot get worse, they do. I am only 250 pages into a 1,200 page feast and already a widow has taken all her savings out of Consols and invested in a property speculation in Pimlico that turns out (what a surprise) to be fraudulent. To avert ruin she must borrow money to “save” her original investment at high interest; after that it’s downhill all the way.
Many years ago I bought shares in a boutique hotel in Glasgow, a city that I hadn’t, still haven’t, visited. I paid £1 a share which seemed a nice round number. Suffice to say the fortunes of my hotel ebbed and Management, wiping a tear away, wrote to say that insolvency loomed. Management warned me about losing good money after bad but admitted I could subscribe for additional shares at 1p. Fortunately I took up this Rights Issue, as it’s known in the City, and shortly thereafter the hotel was sold to the manageress for about 10p. I would have lost 90% of my investment but because I took up the Rights Issue I came out about even. So yesterday morning I had to put The Quincunx down to take up the Rolls Royce Rights Issue attractively priced at £0.32. Good money after bad? I think not.
Now, here’s the rub. The default position on my internet account was not to take up the shares. I had to confirm I wanted them, conditional on my having enough cash in my account. There will be many small investors, as unused to the ways of the City as the widow in The Quincunx, who will lose out, unless RR crashes and burns in which case they will be relieved.
Not as good as the Egmont overture and who’s Martha?